


the unwearying heart over the waves of the sea

by toujours_nigel



Series: Conditions Best Suited [5]
Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Needles, Tattoos, post surgical trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 19:42:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2883572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ralph Lanyon loses his ship at Dunkirk, and tries to find solid ground.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the unwearying heart over the waves of the sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [My-cnnr](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=My-cnnr).



> Title taken from 'The Seafarer', translation mine.
> 
> Story gifted to my-cnnr, originally posted on lj in maryrenaultfics

Under the bandages his hand still hurt when he was discharged from hospital. He had a suspicion that it always would, or for long enough that the absence of pain would be a shock. It shaped the fingers he’d lost, the outer bone of the palm, the truncated finger: a dull throb where flesh remembered existing. A little enough price for life, he reminded himself sternly, men were doing worse. If worse had shifted in his mind from Selleck, struck down by a German U-boat,  to the shard of bone sticking out from Odell’s leg, it was still  true. The loss of half a hand was nothing, or nearly nothing, in war. He could still walk. He was still alive. He had hardly lost anything of importance.  
  
He had lost his ship because of it, but the _Jasmine_ had sunk in any case and his crew with her, who were more worthy of remembrance. The Lords of the Admiralty still saw use in him, and if it weren’t as Old Man to two dozen desperate souls one would have to be childish indeed to complain of usage in war-time. He had faced at the earliest opportunity the difficult task of writing to the families of the men he knew; now that he was out of hospital he could find out at the base about the men he had only known to order about. Matthews’ sister would have to be rung up, and it was only a miracle of geography that prevented her from weeping on him, though, intrepid woman, she might even manage that if she were granted thirty-six hours leave. It discomfited him terribly to be faced with a woman in tears, but he had been good of his kind, and if Ralph had wanted Selleck in his place that had been his particular problem. It hardly mattered anymore.  
  
Alec had been awfully generous, positively importuning with his company and offers of a place to stay till he found his feet and lodgings. Ralph, irritable with pain and chafing with impatience after having been dragged to Alec’s flat immediately upon discharge, had been reduced to reminding him that his own knowledge of Bridstow predated Alec’s residency by a matter of some years, and had been led by envy to add the sort of bitchy remarks he always hoped and never managed to recall once his bolt had been shot. The resultant apology had left him helpless to do anything but sprawl on Alec’s sofa and smile insouciantly at, Lord, what _was_ his name?  
  
He had cut and run when it looked as though tears and a row were in the offing, and found himself loitering at the nearest bus-stop, looking up schedules with some purpose. Between Alec’s door shutting upon steadily shriller imprecations and his boots hitting asphalt, a plan had crystallised. Once thought of, it seemed inevitable, even unto his previous reluctance to go through with it despite much ribbing during his stint on the lower deck. At the beginning of this six-month’ voyage he had wanted to go through with things, but the desire had been primarily emulative in nature, and had died prematurely with Selleck. With its disappearance he realised he had been nursing a peculiarly middle-class, snobbish repugnance that ought by rights have been scrubbed off long since in the salt water but had lingered till the act became defiance, memory, longing. It seemed to be the way with him, just now, all action deflected till too late, till nevermore.  
  
Still, no use dawdling once he’d made the decision. To enter one of the shops in the old town would be simplicity itself, but he did not want a florid mermaid or anchor, or sentimental stylisation of a frigate in full sail. Selleck had had tattoos on his knees, a rooster on one leg and a pig on the other, to save him from shipwreck and bring him safely to land: they had done their work in a way; no watery grave for Selleck, full fathom five, but six honest feet of English soil. The rooster had bled something awful and Selleck, white with pain, had cracked obscene jokes and held on tight enough to nearly crush Ralph’s fingers while the artist worked on with bent head and an admirable lack of concern for his customer. Between the rooster and the pig Ralph had run out for a few bottles of Bass. He and Selleck had stumbled out afterwards, Selleck hanging nearly his whole weight onto Ralph and apologising fervently, and gone staggering down past St. Paul’s before they’d found a bus.  
  
  
On the bus he hunted through his pockets for paper and ended in drawing the _Jasmine_ on the back of a prescription. He had known every line of her within the first few days. His only command, gone into the English Channel with all the souls she’d been carrying. At least they hadn’t been carrying a freight of injured soldiers. His first coherent thought after being fished out had been that he was marked for death by hanging. Perhaps coherent was putting things too high: he’d been out of his mind, just after operation, and Alec had had to sit with him every spare moment to keep him quiet. What he had thought or said between shipwreck and operation theatre he couldn’t hazard a guess at. Perhaps nothing.  
  
The young man from last time had gone off to war with his needles, but the old man at the till looked much the same as ever, not much time in fact having passed, and scowled perfunctorily at Ralph’s sketch before calling forward the artist fiddling with the machines. A girl huddled into coveralls and with a bright defiant look to her, as though much called upon to justify her presence in this place. Or, he revised as she held him expertly down, much called upon to deflect men who thought her profession was only a facade for the oldest in the world. Certainly the buzz of the needle penetrating skin was affecting him in a way he might have been tempted to relieve in company, had the young man he remembered wielding the needle on Selleck been working on him. As it was he needed some time before he could sit up and allow her to tape a square of bandage on his back. Her hands were cool on his heated skin, and the bandage scratchy against the string of antiseptic.  
  
“The Professor’s talking to a supplier,” she said, handing him his shirt and uniform jacket. “He’ll be with you in a minute. Did you lose her at Dunkirk?”  
She had worked in silence, and an absent greeting had been all the words they’d exchanged other than the request to undress. He stared at her for a moment and then busied himself drawing the shirt carefully over his shoulders, presently inquiring of his buttons, “Did the hand give it away?” It was slow work doing them up one-handed while trying to spare his back.  
  
She shrugged and set to cleaning her machine, the single long needle dark with ink and blood. “You’ve a look about you. Keep that on for six hours or so, no less than two. Clean the area carefully with lukewarm water, or cold if you can stand it, but don’t scrub at it, you’ll make it bleed worse. Apply antiseptic cream. Will anyone be helping you look after it, or do you intend to manage yourself?”  
  
“I believe I’ll be able to manage.”  
  
“Show me that you can reach it,” she demanded, and nodded coolly after a second. “It should heal completely in a fortnight, one week if you’ve good healing skin. Try not to do anything strenuous until then. Don’t swim. If it pusses or breaks open come back at once and don’t try to take things on yourself.” She paused, frowning, evidently going over some list in her head. “Oh, don’t walk about without a shirt on unless you want the colours to fade right off; and don’t re-bandage it, not that I think you’ll be able to yourself.”  
  
“I’d manage if I had to,” he bit out, and her eyes shuttered. It made him ache obscurely. “Thanks. That’s a comprehensive list,” he added in a gentler tone, and hazarded a smile she returned perfunctorily.  
  
“We get a lot of sailors who think they know what to do because they’ve heard stories from some old salt who’s been mumbling to himself since before the Great War,” she answered, eyes and attention firmly on her needles. “Pay the Professor on your way out.”  
  
  
It hurt a little to walk, afterwards, and he had to slow his pace to a deliberate stroll to avoid having the skin or the edge of the tape pull. It hurt to sit on the bus, and when it jolted over a pothole an answering jolt went shivering up his spine from the aching place where the _Jasmine_ rested, come to safe harbour at last.


End file.
